African Scripts on Computers and Devices: An Update

Track: Professional | B4 |
Tuesday, March 8, 2022, 5:45am – 6:30am
Held in: Jujama
Presenter:
Debbie Anderson - UC Berkeley

Besides being home to over 2,000 languages, Africa is also home to several historic and modern scripts or writing systems, from ADLaM, Vai, and N’Ko to Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Meroitic Hieroglyphs. It is also a continent where scripts are still being invented. What is the process of getting a script onto a device or computer, and what are the obstacles? What is the level of implementation of the scripts and the languages that use them?

Takeaways: Attendees will be introduced to the wide variety of indigenous writing systems in Africa and the challenges of getting them onto computers and devices, particularly in the crucial first step of getting the script into the Unicode Standard.